


A Soldier and a Doctor

by timetravelingvampire



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Post Reichenbach, and Mycroft, and she's a throwaway mention actually, but not really Mary Morstan, like John isn't getting married, should have tagged Anderson and Donovan too for all the mention they get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:42:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetravelingvampire/pseuds/timetravelingvampire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson had been a soldier and a doctor. Friends had died in his arms. Sherlock was his best friend, but it was just more one death, more blood literally on his hands. He could move on, he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Soldier and a Doctor

John Watson was an intelligent man. Oh, he knew he wasn’t genius-level like the Holmes’ brothers, but he had made it through medical school with high honors, and unlike Sherlock and Mycroft, he had common sense and empathy.

The army though, seeing friends and lovers shot, disfigured, dead, blown to pieces, that had desensitized him to death. Thus, he allowed himself a week to grieve fully over his best friend’s death before he moved on; it was longer than he’d given himself for Mary’s death, but two years of life as a civilian had mellowed him a very little bit.

So, one week to grieve. He skipped the funeral, went to see the grave with Mrs. Hudson, and, on Sunday, packed up Sherlock’s things and put them in his room for Mycroft to deal with.

On the Monday a week after Sherlock jumped - fell - dived off the roof, he called Sarah looking for more steady work. He applied to jobs on the NHS’ website. On Tuesday, he went on a walk and reached for his phone to text Sherlock 32 times. When he got home, he turned off his phone and left it on his bedside table. On Wednesday, he read the first section of the newspaper; the news cycle had moved past the suicide of a fake detective and onto a tiger that had escaped from the zoo and mauled a child. It was the sort of article John would have read out to Sherlock, who would have scoffed and figured out who to blame for the mess; John decided to not read the newspaper anymore. On Thursday, he went to get eggs out of the refrigerator and ended up on the floor, crying over the fingers left in the crisper. On Friday, in the morning, he texted Lestrade to see if they could meet down at the local pub.

Friday night, John wove through the mess of tables and chairs to meet Lestrade at a booth in the back. “Long day?” John asked, raising his eyebrows at how exhausted the other man looked.

Lestrade twirled his pint glass in the condensation left on the table and didn’t look up. “Long week. Have you been reading the news?”

“Not particularly,” John hesitated. “Just checked the front page to see if there was more about Sherlock.”

Lestrade nodded and finally met John’s eyes. “I’ve been put on probation while they look at my prior cases.” He laughed ruefully. “Not Dimmock’s or Gregson’s, mind, just mine.”

“Oh,” John said, struck. “They can’t honestly believe that Sherlock was a fraud, that he committed those crimes.”

“Oh, no, now they think he paid the actual criminals off,” Lestrade shrugged. “They haven’t quite realized that’s impossible, not unless the other Holmes was involved as well, and, well, that wouldn’t happen. Not for things like this.”

John nodded. “Greg...” he started.

“Yeah?”

“Why would Sherlock do this?”

Lestrade looked down at his glass. “I never would have thought it of him. He only cared about what very few people though: you, me, Mrs. Hudson, his brother, loathe though he’d be to ever say that...”

John met Lestrade’s eyes briefly. “He called me. Said it was his suicide note. Made me watch.”

“Oh, shit,” Lestrade said. “That’s just not on, mate!”

“I can’t help but think, oh, I don’t know,” John looked deeply into his pint. “Maybe there was something I could have done.”

“I never would have thought it of him,” Lestrade repeated. “Anyway, you know Sherlock - no one could have talked him down from anything he set his mind to do.”

John nodded. “Oh, believe me, I know.”

That night, the first “I believe in Sherlock Holmes” graffiti appeared down by the docks. John suspected the homeless network.

On Sunday, two weeks since Sherlock left, Lestrade texted whilst John was contemplating asking Mrs. Hudson if he could change the wallpaper. 

did u feel pulse? - GL  
no pulse. only had about five seconds though.  
u sd had been playing w/ball b4, rite? - GL  
yes.  
google “stop pulse” anderson just mntnd it- GL

John bolted straight up on the couch, fingers moving.

mike, does laundry truck normally come on giltspur st?

The reply - as if he’d been waiting for days for the question - came about a minute later.

No. In between the buildings, same as when you were here. Mike

And then that was it: Sherlock was alive. He did go back to the spot, calculating lines of sight and angles and where Sherlock would have landed; a laundry trolley would have held his body nicely and make the injuries Sherlock did receive. A plummet like John was supposed to have believed happen would have done catastrophically more damage than actually shown on Sherlock’s body, so John felt a bit stupid for believing it in the first place.

The next morning, John steeled himself and checked the email linked to his blog. Requests for interviews and emails about the “great fraud” were immediately trashed, but the condolence emails overwhelmed him. He worked out a generic response to send them and plowed through the rest. He hadn’t realized how much support Sherlock truly had; there were emails from cases Sherlock had solved years before John had even met him. Those, he responded personally to and asked if he could share them on the blog.

Solved cases poured in. He was posting one a day, and the backlog was already months-long. Mrs Hudson even jumped in and dictated her husband’s case. That was the turning point; her husband had been on the docket for crimes committed while Sherlock was in nappies.

A month after Sherlock jumped off the roof at Barts, public opinion had changed, and Scotland Yard was forced to rescind Lestrade’s probation and offer a posthumous apology to Sherlock. Donovan was transferred at her own request to Birmingham where she was made DI. Anderson was transferred to Canterbury a month later after overhearing a constable talk about how much he wished he’d have had that chance to take Lestrade out. The constable survived Anderson storming in and trying to physically take him out, but it was close.

Life went on. John took a few courses and applied to work at an A&E. He dated. He helped out Lestrade with medical opinions and ended some nights running through the streets after a criminal with a silver-haired man beside him instead of a curly-haired one; it wasn’t the same, but it was something. There were days when all he wanted was to rail at Mycroft and talk to Sherlock, but he was a very patient man. It could wait. He would come back.

\-----

John glanced over when the door opened and nodded at the head that poked in. Sherlock stepped cautiously through, trying to catalogue the changes in John, in the flat, in the air. He was in the middle of a dramatic twirl and flourish, his coat flaring behind him, some sort of big reveal about to happen, when John harrumphed. “Well, took you long enough. Greg and I thought you might be back last month when we caught Moran for you.”

John’s face was completely passive, but he was cataloguing the different emotions flittering over Sherlock’s face - petulance, confusion, joy, hope - before it settled into a mix of childish disdain and confusion. John sniggered. “Sorry I’m spoiling your dramatic entrance. What? You might as well have written it out in the air as you jumped. I admit, it took me a couple weeks to put it all together, but grieving put me off a bit.

Sherlock ... pouted, was the best word for it. “Well, I’m off, out to see the match at the pub with Greg, Mike, and the new forensics guy. You’ll like him. He’s not Anderson, although Anderson did realize you couldn’t have died, so...”

John was self-aware enough to realize he was actually trying to escape before Sherlock broke his silence, but he shrugged on his jacket anyway and whistled as he walked out the door; he’d had months to work out what he’d say. “Oh, by the way, Molly said she’s been saving some things for you at her lab. I’m not sure if she meant clothes or body parts, but you might phone her.”

He paused and stuck his head back in the door. “Good to have you back. I’ve missed having you around, Sherlock.”

John smiled as he heard the thud of Sherlock throwing himself on the couch in a sulk.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I had read all of these very well-written fics where John ranges from seriously despondent to suicidal to becoming a homeless drug addict because of Sherlock’s fake death. While I liked the fics because of the writing, I found them completely unrealistic based on real life and John's characterisation in the fan fic AU that is the BBC series.
> 
> Plus, he’s not an idiot. Neither is Lestrade.
> 
> Thanks to the people at the Final Problem tumblr for doing some of the research so I didn’t have to? Cheers.


End file.
